Movies : October 2001
31 October 2001
Mulholland Drive
You would think that a movie with such leaden pacing and stilted performances would have one fewer glaring error of continuity (positioning of the hands of an actor who turns out to be the composer). A brunette riding in a limousine along Mulholland Drive is threatened with death but a collision with an oncoming car kills her would-be killer and leaves her with a head wound that decorously drips halfway down her face and stops. She wanders down the hill to Sunset Boulevard and, after spending the night under a bush, manages to infiltrate an apartment whose renter is just off on a trip. Meanwhile, blonde Betty (Naomi Watts) has just arrived at an airport, the location of which must be established by a clumsy cutaway to a
Welcome to Los Angeles
banner, on her way to occupy her aunt’s apartment. When she finds the brunette in the shower, she is sufficiently generous to offer her assistance in discovering what the story is—for the brunette cannot remember her name or anything else about herself. Two hours of cinematic time later, the opening of a stoutly constructed blue box (about the size of a basic Rubik’s cube, really, and with properties which would find it at home on
The Outer Limits) plunges the camera into darkness and a last half hour which has more reverses than the end credits of
Wild Things
(not all of the scenes are necessarily in the same universe). Did I like it? I was pretty happy that I had paid nothing to see this. I recognized the fantasy element about halfway through when I speculated on how the brunette (who takes her name Rita from a poster for
Gilda) could keep changing her wardrobe since they never shop for those clothes (or for groceries, actually) and there is no way she could wear Betty’s clothes—they differ in dress size significantly. Those of you who would appreciate the toplessness know who you are.
146 minutes.
12 October 2001
My First Mister
Gloomy Goth chick Jennifer (Leelee Sobieski), 17 years old and just graduated from high school, faces the prospect of employment. With her tattoos, piercings, and cuttings, she is unable to warm up to the stuffy managers at shops of Century City Mall. (Proudly made entirely on location in Los Angeles, there is nevertheless a suspicious array of GmbH and KG funding.) Until, that is, she sees Randall (Albert Brooks) carrying a naked female mannequin into a store window. J and R give each other a few chances, job-wise and friendship-wise, until—gasp!—a medical emergency arises and the need for a salvageable ending is apparent. Did I like it? Seventeen year olds attracted to 49 year olds?
Who writes this stuff?
Uh, and why am I almost the only one in the theater? Randall quite plainly works in a mens’ apparel store of the kind that is failing across the country, but no one comments on the absurdity of their possession of a female mannequin in the first place. And the choice to show at least two of her classmates with rhinoplasty bandages—so
Clueless
from
6
years ago. Like Calvin (the boy in the comic strip) said:
Mainstream commercial nihilism can’t be trusted?!
109 minutes.
08 October 2001
L.I.E.Aging pedophile Big John (Brian Cox) just can’t get a break from his mother. She calls at the most inopportune times— yak, yak, yakking (we see him making the hand puppet gesture) about her ailments or suspicious that his car is home when he’s supposed to be at his own medical appointment— like just as he’s trying to get mixed-up teenager Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) to trust him by showing him pornography. Yes, it’s an NC–17 film at the multiplex! Such are the details that enliven this otherwise mostly naturalistic approach to the bleakness of life in suburbia for Howie and his house-burgling, incest-friendly pals. (Never mind the physical monstrousness or intellectual feebleness of any offspring, this last pal can’t even figure out Captain Kirk’s nickname for the doctor— another candidate for a closed captioning decoder.) Did I like it? Eschewing the humor and wacky characters in Happiness, and restricted in its locations, it must rely on delicate acting from all involved. Beware the guy who hangs on to a bright orange Oldsmobile 4-4-2, eh?
108 minutes.
07 October 2001
Max Keeble’s Big MoveMax Keeble (Alex D. Linz) has got his problems. Seems he upset the local ice cream truck driver (Jamie Kennedy) a while back, and the goddess on his paper route (her appearance invariably accompanied by the opening strains to …baby one more time) ignores him. Plus today is his first day of seventh grade. Max has decided that his days of being uncool and the subject of bullies’ torments are over. But things do not go well that first day and now Principal Jindraike (Larry Miller) has singled him out for special attention when he isn’t plotting the destruction of the animal shelter next door to replace it with a stadium. When Max’ father (Robert Carradine) caves in to his own bully of a boss and announces a move to Chicago that weekend, Max sees an opportunity to get back at everybody without consequences to himself. Did I like it? The cafeteria food fight scene is a little unspecific and unproportional. The presence of Megan (Zena Grey) as the compatriot with the symmetrical features and clear skin that our hero ignores in pursuit of the ninth-grader blonde strains credulity (there was one in Snow Day, too). And the continuing parade of very cute, only slightly more mature actresses as the teachers is highly suspicious. But none of it is really a problem.
86 minutes.
06 October 2001
Joy Ride
At least Leelee Sobieski gets to play college age this time around. But Linda Fiorentino she’s not. You might have gathered from the trailer (which features Sobieski very prominently) or the television commercials (which can barely spare a frame to acknowledge her presence) that the plot involves playing a joke on a trucker who doesn’t take kindly to being fooled.
Duel
this is not. Did I like it? Citizen’s Band radio was already a dead letter, I thought, when I took a cross-country trip in 1987. Yet here it is taking center stage when Fuller (Steve Zahn) installs one in the 1971 Chrysler Newport that his brother Lewis (Paul Walker, the weenie from
The Fast and the Furious) has just bought in a desperate attempt to impress Venna (Sobieski) whom he hopes to pick up in Colorado and drive to New Jersey. But bailing brother out of jail has slightly derailed that plan. When Fuller goads Lewis into pretending to be a woman over the airwaves (
it’s the pre-Internet, just like a chat room
) the consequences for them and Venna and the BMW Z3 driving Charlotte are dire. But that truck driver with a mind for vengeance has got to be as busy as Sharon Stone was in
Basic Instinct. Let’s see what the lesson is: don’t let a psychopathic personality push you into something you don’t want to do even if it is family. By the end, it’s a little too over the top, and a little Fuller goes a long way (anyone else would have dropped him as fast as Ricky should have been in
Made).
96 minutes.
05 October 2001
AberdeenA young woman with a British passport but suitably mixed parentage (the better to accomodate the multinational production and casting) gets a phone call in the morning after a one-night stand (are you Edward?—Eric!) from her mother. Mother (Charlotte Rampling) is actually hiding something from her daughter when asking that Kaisa (Lena Headey) find her father Tomas (Stellan Skarsgård) and bring him home to Scotland. This will be a little difficult, seeing as how Tomas is thoroughly drunk in some bar in Norway. As the unlikely pair make their way to Aberdeen, Kaisa and Tomas will do much arguing about the past and the present and they will experience considerable difficulties ameliorated only slightly by a kindly truck driver (Ian Hart) who is willing to take a chance on some quick sex. Did I like it? When Kaisa must rent a car from Oslo and demands a flashy one, they give her a chuckle-inducing something else which is nevertheless lensed in a sufficient number of beauty shots as to arouse suspicion. Ultimately, I discover from an atlas that Bergen, Norway and Aberdeen, United Kingdom are the endpoints of very nearly the shortest line that can be drawn between the two countries, so the journey (which takes several days once they reach the UK’s shores) has an underlying geographic implausibility which I felt at the time.
106 minutes.
Entries subject to editing at any time. Last edited on: 12-Sep-2004